Cary, NC Trash Pickup Schedule
Collection days, holiday changes, recycling rules, and drop-off options for Cary, North Carolina — in one page, with sources.
Trash pickup in Cary, NC is assigned by zone or street — Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Match your area in the trash schedule table below.
Trash
When is each service collected?
Recurring schedule for Cary services.
| Service | When | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Trash | Depends on your zone | Depends on your zone — check the zone list |
Which zone is my street in?
Collection day by zone. Confirm at the edges with the city.
| Zone | Day | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Cycle Blue — Monday | Monday | 8 mapped zone(s) on the Blue recycling cycle |
| Cycle Yellow — Monday | Monday | 4 mapped zone(s) on the Yellow recycling cycle |
| Cycle Blue — Tuesday | Tuesday | 5 mapped zone(s) on the Blue recycling cycle |
| Cycle Yellow — Tuesday | Tuesday | 12 mapped zone(s) on the Yellow recycling cycle |
| Cycle Blue — Wednesday | Wednesday | 8 mapped zone(s) on the Blue recycling cycle |
| Cycle Yellow — Wednesday | Wednesday | 7 mapped zone(s) on the Yellow recycling cycle |
| Cycle Blue — Thursday | Thursday | 15 mapped zone(s) on the Blue recycling cycle |
| Cycle Yellow — Thursday | Thursday | 5 mapped zone(s) on the Yellow recycling cycle |
Service days by zone
The city publishes service-specific zone or cycle details rather than one shared date calendar.
What about bulky or special items?
Mattresses, appliances, storm debris — the rules before you set them out.
- — Every zone carries a Cycle_NEW value - Blue or Yellow. Recycling is collected on the zone's weekday every other week according to the cycle color; the town's calendar document (linked on each zone) defines which weeks are Blue vs Yellow.
- — The service is named FY18RerouteBoundary - the mapped day/cycle geography is the FY2018 reroute that the town still uses as its citizen lookup basis. Any conflicting address should be checked against the town's live lookup.
Who collects what?
The provider for each service and how to reach them.
| Service | Provider | Contact |
|---|---|---|
| Trash | Town of Cary (town-collected) |
Common questions
The things Cary residents ask most.
What day is trash pickup in Cary NC?
Cary collection runs Monday through Thursday. The town's lookup geography divides the town into 64 zones - 17 Monday, 17 Tuesday, 15 Wednesday and 20 Thursday zones - each with a fixed weekly collection day.
What are the Blue and Yellow cycles in Cary?
The 64 collection zones are split into a Blue cycle (36 zones) and a Yellow cycle (28 zones). The cycle marks every-other-week collection (recycling) - your zone's color determines which alternating week your material is collected.
How do I find my Cary collection day and cycle?
The town's GIS item was built 'to allow citizens to enter their address and find out their new collection day and cycle' - the same geography powers the zone map here and the town's address lookup.
What changed recently?
Every update to this page, newest first.
- Record created from Town of Cary AGOL open data: 64 day/cycle zones (Day_NEW x Cycle_NEW Blue/Yellow) with per-zone calendar-document links. Item is the town's official collection-day lookup geography.
- QA: population corrected to Census Vintage 2023 estimate (Cary town: 180,010; prior estimate 174721).
Population 180,010 · Sources: Town of Cary 'FY18RerouteBoundary' FeatureServer layer 0 'NewDayCycle…, Town of Cary collection calendar document (linked from every zone fea… · Summarized from municipal, hauler, and public-data records; schedules change without notice.